Skunk Works Model : Let us look at Wikipedia explanation of Skunk Works - "an official alias for Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs (ADP), formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. Skunk Works is responsible for a number of famous aircraft designs, including the U-2, the SR-71, the F-117, and the F-22. Its largest current project is the F-35 Lightning II, which will be used in the air forces of several countries around the world. "Skunk works" or "skunkworks" is widely used in business, engineering, and technical fields to describe a group within an organization given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, tasked with working on advanced or secret projects." They also have a cute logo :) see ...
You can checkout skunk works website which lists the Kelly’s 14 Rules. This Lessons Learned PDF also explains from the horse mouth the critical success factors and nitti gritties of running Skunkworks. Indian armed force leaders also once in a while speak about starting Skunkworks type units,but as usual these are all 'seminar proclamations' for hungry media consumption!
Now to explain further – If you think your organization is 'too heavy' to change you can try out Skunkworks model.The Skunkworks was first copied by beaurocratic blue suit IBM to move out its Mainframe thinking to make PCs . Malaysian airlines further popularized this concept who formed ‘ mini laboratories’ to solve specific issues.
The most celebrated example is Motorola’s Razr mobile phone which was set up in downtown Chicago, 50 miles from its main R&D facility in suburban Illinois. With lots of bright colors and no dividing walls, the building and design of the laboratory’s workspace were very different from Motorola’s main office.Motorola ‘once upon a time’ was an Innovation factory with examples like the legendary Appolo Spacecraft communication program. Over the years they lost out .Though they have over 20000+ patents and was among the top 10 recipients of U.S. patents during the 1990s, it slipped to 30th in 2004, according to USPTO. Also like many big firms translating patents to dollars was another big challenge for them.
I had worked for Motorola - great company, an amazing process machine but bit rigid too :) Read this fascinating story from Fortune Magazine which explains how the Skunkworks team worked around and bulldozed the Motorola culture and created a winner. MotoRAZR won more than a dozen innovation awards including 2005 IDEA winner and CES 2005 best of innovations award and was one of the first cell phone (other than iPhone) to cross the 50 Million unit sales.MotoRAZR also is a another great example of ‘competence enhancing innovations’ which we discussed in this blog earlier. The Razr skunkworks team leveraged on their parents deep expertise of ‘clamshell’ technology to produce a extra slim but rugged design.
The only caution with Skunkworks model is that one should be able to replicate or transform the parent – if not the gorilla parent will kill the Skunkbaby! And that is what happened to Razr team….............. Sadly nothing new came after the Razr :( :( ........You never know for sure though! They have some funny innovations patented. One invention is a phone and goggle combo (possibly it will be a Dolce & Gabbana as they tried with Razr!) Another patent idea can alert the user by a small shock (yes shock!) instead of vibrator (which by the way was another motorola innovation during those good ol days!)
So.......here comes another tip! if you are venturing to Skunkworks model -- take time off and watch the movie One Trick Pony starring Paul Simon,learn the lessons and dont become one :)
